We got into the book publishing game by being rejected. Our original idea was to repurpose topical coloring books as digital files and provide them to teachers/students with some project ideas. Houghton-Mifflin liked our focus on technology projects for the classroom and offered us a book deal for a more general product.
I still think the thematic clipart idea was great.
We came to this idea from developing and distributing a clipart collection for North Dakota Game and Fish. I just happened to think of this clipart collection again today. You can still reach the site and download the clipart. We received funding from ND Game and Fish to develop this clipart in 1992 and placed the images on our server in 2001. We originally distributed the images on disk. Images for reptiles, birds, mammals and fish are available.
These are gif files (remember the time frame here) but it should be easy to download (right click on the images) and use a “paint” program of some type of convert to jpg files. The files could be transfered to an iPad and used a wide variety of ways. These files are intended for noncommercial use only (I guess I need to say that).
